The Runners-Up Trend aka "The Gill Curse"

[Teen Wolf]

PART I

Not breaking any news here, but it’s a curious stat which only gets more curious upon further investigation.

AFLW Grand Finals since that time Gill McLachlan cowardly cancelled a season
2021: Brisbane def Adelaide
22S6: Adelaide def Melbourne
22S7: Melbourne def Brisbane
2023: Brisbane def North Melb.
2024: North Melb. def Brisbane

The last 4 runners-up have gone on to win the premiership in the following season.

The pretty version:

 

[Teen Wolf]

PART II

I suppose it’s a curse in the sense that you’d rather not have to lose before winning, or you could view it as a curse for other teams who time after time are just being bulldozed by the momentum of redemption stories. In any case, we've all seen some variation of this quote attributed to Michael Jordan (even though he definitely didn't come up with it):



Seems like AFLW teams are taking that to heart.


WILL IT CONTINUE IN 2025?

In previous years, the runners-up were still competitive in the Grand Final.

For Brisbane to win this year, not only would they have to exploit the Gill curse for a second time (we don’t know if the Gill curse allows double dips), they’d also have to buck the hard-to-bounce-back-from-a-thrashing trend which holds up reasonably well throughout the history of Australian football (and all sports, really).


THE BACK-TO-BACK CURSE

If a team is to stop Brisbane from extending the Gill curse, at this point you’d have to say North Melbourne would be the favourites.

HOWEVER, doing so would mean defying the back-to-back curse—that is, no AFLW team has won two premierships in a row… yet.


CROSSING COMPS

While we can’t be sure Brisbane’s women’s team will again benefit from the Gill curse, their men’s team has just joined in on the hoodoo, having bounced back from a GF loss in 2023 to win it in 2024. You’d have to go back to Hawthorn 2012-13 for the next most recent time it’s happened at AFL level.

And that leads us into part III...

 

[Teen Wolf]

PART III

PRECEDENCE

4-times-in-a-row has never happened in VFL/AFL history. There are 2 instances of 3-in-a-row: one in the ‘70s (North, Hawthorn, North albeit with a drawn GF thrown in there) and another in the ‘80s (Hawthorn, Carlton, Hawthorn).

But even 3 times in a row is extremely rare for something like a top-level competition. It has never happened in the SANFL, WAFL, VFA and a bunch of other footy leagues.


Other sports in Australia

3-in-a-row has only happened twice in the Sheffield Shield, both 100+ years ago when there was no Grand Final played. 4-in-a-row happened once in women’s national cricket (early 2000s), but with the same 2 teams (unlike 4 unique teams per the current AFLW example), and never more than 2-in-a-row in the 70 years prior or 20 years since.

In rugby league, across both the NRL and NSWRL, the only instance of 3-in-a-row happened from 2006 to 2009 which no longer counts because the Storm cheated like dogs.

In netball, 3-in-a-row happened once in the mid-2000s (Swifts, Phoenix, Swifts).


Around the world

I couldn’t find instances of more than 2 in a row across the big 4 American leagues, FIFA World Cups, FA Cups…

There was one 3-in-a-row in English first division football in the 1980s (Liverpool, Everton, Liverpool), and one 3-in-a-row in Women’s Super League in the 2010s (Chelsea, Man City, Chelsea).

I'm "sure" I could find some examples of 4 (or more) in a row if I keep looking up different competitions, but it won't change the conclusion I've drawn by already looking through collectively thousands of years of sporting history: "it's rare" would be the main takeaway here.


WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

The rarity of this trend basically just confirms what we already know, most strongly reaffirmed with this stat:

Highest AFLW win%
73.3: North Melb.
71.5: Adelaide
71.3: Melbourne
71.0: Brisbane

Fremantle (57.1%) is the only other team to have won more games than they’ve lost (Essendon are at an even 50%). Combined, the top 5 clubs have won 294 matches, while the other 13 have won 285.

Whereas some competitions have had an imbalance in which one team is head-and-shoulders above the rest for an extended period, we’ve simply seen a handful of teams share that sustained dominance in the opening decade of AFLW.

 

[Teen Wolf]

PART IV

THE 2020 HYPOTHETICAL

At the time, the conventional wisdom had Fremantle and North Melbourne headed for a Grand Final meeting in 2020, if the season wasn’t interrupted.

But here’s what we know for a fact: Carlton were runners-up in 2019, and Brisbane were premiers in 2021. If we were to abide the curse, this means Carlton should’ve beaten Brisbane in the 2020 Grand Final!



And make no mistake, such an outcome was still a distinct possibility, had the original fixture and finals system been allowed to play out. You could certainly argue Fremantle v Brisbane and North v Carlton would've been the most likely PF matchups. From there, you're talking about a couple of upsets to get to a Carl-Bris GF, but who knows.


SPIRIT OF THE CURSE

Putting aside letter-of-the-law specifics, the general idea of this phenomena is not so phenomenal but perfectly intuitive: Before you become the best, you're going to get close to the best. With that in mind, let's say Brisbane doesn't win it this year. We may then ask ourselves: who was the spiritual 2nd best team of 2024?

There's Hawthorn, who finished 2nd on the ladder, but bombed out in finals and never played NM.

There's Adelaide, who lost to North by 15 points across 2 games.

And then there's the one team NM played but didn't beat in 2024, namely Geelong. Sure, salvaging a draw may not seem so impressive when considering it was against a team coming off a 35-degree R1 away game in early September... But the Cats were undoubtedly battling with adversity of their own in the form of injuries, which is clearly what led to their failure to make finals.